


Please Don't Go

by shipyard98



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Assault, Bisexual Jack Kelly, Burns, Cigars, Fights, Fist Fights, Fluffy Ending, Gay, Gay Newsies, Hurt Racetrack Higgins, M/M, Manhattan, Mild Language, Near Death, New York City, Side Story, Underage Smoking, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 02:28:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16441289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipyard98/pseuds/shipyard98
Summary: After Race realizes he accidentally left behind his cigar in Newsies Square, he goes back to retrieve it. However, this leads to the worst fight he’s ever been in with the Delancey brothers and the best moment he's ever shared with Jack.





	Please Don't Go

**Author's Note:**

> This was sort of inspired by Shiloh Dynasty's "Don't Go to Sleep".

Above Manhattan, the skies were ablaze with the colors of the fast-approaching twilight. Street lamps that had been asleep throughout the day flickered to life. They acted as guides for the remaining newsies that were, at this very moment, leaving the _New York World’s_ Newsies Square to head back to the lodging house. Among them were Albert, Romeo, Race, Crutchie, and Jack Kelly.

These five boys talked amongst themselves as they walked.

“Ya shoulda seen it!” Romeo practically sung. “She was pretty AND she liked me!”

“Sounds to me like ya fell asleep on the job,” Race remarked with a smirk, which prompted an angry glare from Romeo and a laugh from the other three.

“Ey Jack,” Crutchie piped up. “Ya think you could help me find a new selling spot tomorrow? I didn’t sell enough papes today.”

Just as Jack was about to agree to help, Albert interrupted with a defiant, “Why ask ‘im when you could come to me?”

“You’s the last person anybody’d take advice from,” Race said. Albert, of course, smacked him in the chest in order to shut him up. Race was about to pounce on him when Jack intervened, putting his hands on either of the boys’ chests like he was bound between two closing walls.

“Knock it off you two,” he said. “Last thing we want right now is to bring trouble to us.”

Albert nodded quietly and grumpily before yanking himself away from him. Race, on the other hand, was uncharacteristically quiet for a few seconds. Despite being the noisiest and most defiant of the newsies, all he could do was stare. From what Jack could feel, the blonde boy’s heartbeat had suddenly picked up the pace.

If Jack didn't know any better, he could've sworn he saw a glint of yearning somewhere in his face.

“Whatevah,” he finally managed to grumble as he took a step back.

“Wussamatta, Racer,” Jack smirked, successfully masking his own nervousness. “Lose ya footin’?”

“How ‘boutcha shut ya mouth before I make ya.” Race snapped while the other boys chuckled at this remark.

To steady his nerves, he went searching for his most prized possession, a Corona cigar. He was itching to get a little tobacco into his system, but the search was becoming more and more frantic as he realized that the cigar was nowhere to be found.

Immediately, he put the blame on Albert.

“Gimme back my cigar, ya punk!” he shouted at the ginger.

Albert’s expression contorted into one of confusion and anger.

“I don’t got it.”

To prove it, he turned his pants pockets inside out to reveal nothing. Race then turned the blame onto Romeo, who was quick to deny it.

“Didn’t ya put it down near Mr. Wiesel’s stand while you was teasin’ him?” Crutchie suddenly asked.

The memory of that exact moment hit Race like a train.

“Ah damn it!”

He immediately took off in the other direction, back to Newsies Square. The other boys tried persuading him to come back, but he wasn’t ready to listen. Especially when he had to work his ass off to get his hands on that cigar.

“You three go on ahead,” Jack told the other three newsies as he started to follow after Race, who was so far behind the group at this moment. “I gotta bad feeling somethin’s gonna happen.”

Luckily for Race, the gates were still open.

He made a frantic search around Wiesel’s stand, praying to God that the old man didn’t swipe it. It was like it had disappeared from thin air or something.

A voice from behind him made his heart sink.

“Looking for this?”

Race looked to see the Delancey brothers with snarky grins on their faces. Oscar had the cigar between his fingers, and smoke was drifting from its lit end. The brothers approached him slowly but meticulously. Any passerby might have mistaken them for a pair of hungry predators.

“What a tragic waste of a cigar,” Race remarked sarcastically.

“Watch ya mouth,” Morris hissed. “There ain’t nobody here but us.”

“Ooh, I’m so scared,” the blondie retorted. He put his hands along his face to demonstrate his ‘fear’ of the brothers. “Whaddaya gonna do, huh? Ya wanna _try_ to beat me up?”

“Careful whatcha wish for,” Oscar said.

Morris suddenly tackled Race to the ground. He flailed his entire body in hopes that he could wrangle himself out of the Delancey’s grasp. To Race’s frustration, Morris Delancey had a tight grip, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

He thrashed around some more until Morris was prompted to sock him in the stomach, which felt like a bullet with his freshly equipped brass knuckles. The struggle immediately stopped as Race’s abdomen was suddenly overcome by pain. Finding pleasure in the newsie’s pain, Morris kept punching him until Oscar prompted him to stop. At this point, blood was starting to trickle.

“That ain’t enough,” Oscar said. “Lemme see ‘im, but keep a hold’ on.”

Morris obliged, and now Race was pinned to the ground with a good view of the other brother. He noticed that the lit cigar was still in his hand, and he immediately put two and two together.

Race weakly began to shake his head at him and he opened his mouth to say something, anything to make him stop. Any word he could have said was quickly replaced with screams. He tried to thrash about again, hoping that this would be enough to force Oscar to remove the lit end from his right cheek.

The branding tool was removed from his face and moved to his neck; an action which prompted tears to streak down Race’s face.

The pain was overwhelming. The poor boy prayed quietly that God would just go ahead and take him to Heaven. Death was better than this.

Suddenly, he heard somebody approach them at an alarming speed.

With his blurry vision, Race could just barely see Jack Kelly knock Oscar to the ground and wrestle Morris away from him.

That was when his head hit the pavement and everything went black.

\----------------------------

Race’s eyes fluttered open.

He looked up at the wood of the bed above him, barely illuminated by candlelight. It was a pleasant change, compared to the faces of the Delancey brothers. Anything that wasn’t the Delanceys was a pleasant change in his mind, especially after what he just went through. A dull pain shot through him as he tried to sit up and look around.

Jack was there to put him back down.

“Ya really askin’ to get more bruises, ain't ya?”

For Race, the impulse to throw a retort back at him was overcome with the appearance of who he now saw as his savior. In the dim light of the candle, he could see that the Delanceys had given him a black eye. It didn't diminish his beauty, but it was still a shock to see how swollen and painful it looked.

“Jack…” he murmured.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me none. Just worry ‘bout yourself.”

“Why should I worry? I'm prob'ly still… prettiah than the Delanceys.”

Jack smiled.

"A real woik of art."

This struck a chord, and Race suddenly wanted to say so much. He wanted details about what he did to the brothers, and he wanted to praise him for coming to the rescue. Most importantly, in that moment, he wanted to confess something… important.

Instead, all he could say was, “Thanks.”

Jack’s response wasn’t in words, like Race expected. Rather, he responded by lowering his lips onto his forehead and planting a delicate kiss. Race’s cheeks flared red, which Jack tried his best not to point out.

“Get some sleep,” he whispered.

Jack turned around to head out of the lodging house and back to his place on the roof, with his best friend beside him and the unfriendly streets below them. Before he could, however, he felt a hand grab at his shirttail. The brunette looked down at his blonde admirer, who looked a little panicked and a little agonized. At first not saying anything, Race stared at him until he could finally mutter three words.

“Please don’t go.”

Before either of them knew it, Jack was lying in the bottom bunk with his arms around Race. The dull pain was still barely there, but he either didn’t care or didn’t notice. In his arms, he had never felt more comfortable.

For both of the boys, it was like the world stood still just for them.

Jack nuzzled his face into the side of Race's neck that didn't bear the burn.

“I ain't goin' nowhere.”


End file.
